Do you believe people really lived as long as the Bible says they did?

Do you believe people really lived as long as the Bible says they did?

Is there a scientific explanation that explains why the longevity of people declined over time?

The oldest person in the Bible was Methuselah at 969 years, then later God lowered the average life span to 120 years, and then even lower to our current average of 70 to 80 years--and this because of the increasing wickedness of mankind.

Adam lived 930 years, and then he died. [Genesis 5:5]

Seth lived 912 years, and then he died. [Genesis 5:8]

Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died. [Genesis 5:11]

Kenan lived 910 years, and then he died. [Genesis 5:14]

Mahalalel lived 895 years, and then he died. [Genesis 5:17]

Jared lived 962 years, and then he died. [Genesis 5:20]

Methuselah lived 969 years, and then he died. [Genesis 5:27]

Lamech lived 777 years, and then he died. [Genesis 5:31]

Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years." [Genesis 6:3]

"The length of our days is seventy years - or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away." [Psalm 90:10]

A better question would be: Is there any evidence that they actually lived as long as they were supposed to have lived?

Because no, there isn't. The claim of longevity seems to have been very unique to the middle eastern cultures.

In sumerian mythology for example. Kings have been said to have ruled for not simply a thousand years, but hundreds of thousands of years. But archeological evidence only goes as far back as 12000 years when it comes to civilization. So what were they ruling over then? Villages? Cavemen settlements? And they weren't even christian, nor jewish, nor monotheistic. Were they then more virtuous than Adam?!

In truth these fantastic claimed ages are gap-fillers. Meant so that men will seem closer to the purported date of creation. The fiction writers of the myths (which aren't biblical in origin at all, but Sumerian, so that alone is a red flag: it's a borrowed story) weren't imaginative enough to make up ancestors so they just artificially exaggerated ages. Also the fact that back then, history was barely even recorded. A guy who lived two centuries before would have been utterly forgotten or become the stuff of myths. Hence why in royal historical records, records BEFORE the time that those records have been written often contain such a vast number of exaggerations. Such as wars between hundreds of thousands of people (when the world barely contained such populations of humans), or cities stretching one corner of the earth to the other, people who were supposed to have been 10 feet tall and eat rocks for breakfast, people with magical powers, etc etc. Simply because the historians who wrote it were writing about things they have absolutely no knowledge about except folk tales from their brother's sister-in-law's aunt's maid's mother's uncle's son. They didn't know archeology, nor did they even master the art of writing itself. Merely writing in an ancient version of text-speak and etch-a-sketch to represent very complex languages.

Not to mention how very easy it is to confuse numbers and names especially when something historical is transcribed over and over and over again. For example, there have been several instances of adding an additional 0 where there weren't any in the original, instances of mistaking a certain word for another (as ancient numerals often are written very confusingly, either in simple easy-to-mistranslate symbols, or using the same symbols as actual words), and of course, instances were the actual measurement of time is different. The word for 'month' may have evolved into a word for 'years'. Or people may have measured age in weeks, or by full moons, or by how often the rivers flood their villages. Etc. etc.

And of course there is the mistaking persons with the same names to be the same persons. Especially since names in the past often were simply one name and the only distinction being their place of origin or their status or work or their father. An example. If two people named Kifr lived in Tanis, Egypt, one in 6000 BC the other in 6200 BC and both are mentioned in the historical records as having the same professions and status. It would be quite easy to assume that they were the same person and that Kifr lived for 200 years. When it might actually be that the second Kifr is the great-great-grandson of the original Kifr, and the profession and status is a combination of coincidence and continuing the 'family tradition'.

It doesn't help either that persons of the same names often impersonate people from earlier times in order to plagiarize their work and add to it. There are several apocryphal writings that were discovered to have been done this way.

It has happened a lot before. Hence why modern historians often append descriptors (in ancient times, they had no such descriptions, they were simply known by one name). Hence there is Dionysus the Elder and Dionysus the Younger, there is Dionysus of Phocaea and Dionysus of Cyrene, there is Dionysus the Areopagite and the plagiarist Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite. You get the idea.

Your only evidence that they lived for close to a thousand years is a book. Why aren't they cross-referenced in their thousand years of existance? Surely they would have had 200 more books written about them, or statues and monuments, cities named after them, wars fought for them, world-changing historical events about this race of near immortals. If people lived to such ages in those times, why aren't we seeing evidence of such populations of long-lived people. Heck, if *I* lived to a thousand years back then, I would have had the patience to conquer most of the world already, build cities of unimaginable splendor, etc. Especially since I would have had the centuries to actually wait for, say, a 500 foot statue of me to be slowly hand carved by my village.

meninlove said lol, by your fallacious reasoning, Canada is less wicked than the US.

What reasoning do you assume I have? I never said that age has anything to do with wickedness. lol I don't know about you sometimes. Your assuming of things all the time is a bad problem you have. You really should seek some counseling because if you are doing this in your relationships it is going to get you into a hell of lot of trouble all the time. No wonder you can't understand the Bible. You are not able to take what the Bible or what someone else says without saying more or less than what they really are saying because you are putting an interpretation on someone's words that isn't there. You aren't the only that has a problem with this.

Sedative saidA better question would be: Is there any evidence that they actually lived as long as they were supposed to have lived?

Because no, there isn't. The claim of longevity seems to have been very unique to the middle eastern cultures.

In sumerian mythology for example. Kings have been said to have ruled for not simply a thousand years, but hundreds of thousands of years. But archeological evidence only goes as far back as 12000 years when it comes to civilization. So what were they ruling over then? Villages? Cavemen settlements? And they weren't even christian, nor jewish, nor monotheistic. Were they then more virtuous than Adam?!

In truth these fantastic claimed ages are gap-fillers. Meant so that men will seem closer to the purported date of creation. The fiction writers of the myths (which aren't biblical in origin at all, but Sumerian, so that alone is a red flag: it's a borrowed story) weren't imaginative enough to make up ancestors so they just artificially exaggerated ages. Also the fact that back then, history was barely even recorded. A guy who lived two centuries before would have been utterly forgotten or become the stuff of myths. Hence why in royal historical records, records BEFORE the time that those records have been written often contain such a vast number of exaggerations. Such as wars between hundreds of thousands of people (when the world barely contained such populations of humans), or cities stretching one corner of the earth to the other, people who were supposed to have been 10 feet tall and eat rocks for breakfast, people with magical powers, etc etc. Simply because the historians who wrote it were writing about things they have absolutely no knowledge about except folk tales from their brother's sister-in-law's aunt's maid's mother's uncle's son. They didn't know archeology, nor did they even master the art of writing itself. Merely writing in an ancient version of text-speak and etch-a-sketch to represent very complex languages.

Not to mention how very easy it is to confuse numbers and names especially when something historical is transcribed over and over and over again. For example, there have been several instances of adding an additional 0 where there weren't any in the original, instances of mistaking a certain word for another (as ancient numerals often are written very confusingly, either in simple easy-to-mistranslate symbols, or using the same symbols as actual words), and of course, instances were the actual measurement of time is different. The word for 'month' may have evolved into a word for 'years'. Or people may have measured age in weeks, or by full moons, or by how often the rivers flood their villages. Etc. etc.

And of course there is the mistaking persons with the same names to be the same persons. Especially since names in the past often were simply one name and the only distinction being their place of origin or their status or work or their father. An example. If two people named Kifr lived in Tanis, Egypt, one in 6000 BC the other in 6200 BC and both are mentioned in the historical records as having the same professions and status. It would be quite easy to assume that they were the same person and that Kifr lived for 200 years. When it might actually be that the second Kifr is the great-great-grandson of the original Kifr, and the profession and status is a combination of coincidence and continuing the 'family tradition'.

It doesn't help either that persons of the same names often impersonate people from earlier times in order to plagiarize their work and add to it. There are several apocryphal writings that were discovered to have been done this way.

It has happened a lot before. Hence why modern historians often append descriptors (in ancient times, they had no such descriptions, they were simply known by one name). Hence there is Dionysus the Elder and Dionysus the Younger, there is Dionysus of Phocaea and Dionysus of Cyrene, there is Dionysus the Areopagite and the plagiarist Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite. You get the idea.

Your only evidence that they lived for close to a thousand years is a book. Why aren't they cross-referenced in their thousand years of existance? Surely they would have had 200 more books written about them, or statues and monuments, cities named after them, wars fought for them, world-changing historical events about this race of near immortals. If people lived to such ages in those times, why aren't we seeing evidence of such populations of long-lived people. Heck, if *I* lived to a thousand years back then, I would have had the patience to conquer most of the world already, build cities of unimaginable splendor, etc. Especially since I would have had the centuries to actually wait for, say, a 500 foot statue of me to be slowly hand carved by my village.

Just because there isn't any physical evidence for something, doesn't ever mean it didn't happen. Someday, there may be no physical evidence that terrorists drove planes into the twin towers and collapsed them because all records of this could get destroyed. And even if one record like the Bible is not destroyed, that would not prove that what someone wrote about it was true. Some people coud think it was just one of the myths we had about terrorists. Now with geological digs, they might find some evidence of some towers that collapsed, but there would be no absolute proof that they collapsed from planes hitting them or even why the planes hit the towers.

So you see, a lack of evidence for something does not necessarily mean it never happened.

Sedative saidA better question would be: Is there any evidence that they actually lived as long as they were supposed to have lived?

Because no, there isn't. The claim of longevity seems to have been very unique to the middle eastern cultures.

In sumerian mythology for example. Kings have been said to have ruled for not simply a thousand years, but hundreds of thousands of years. But archeological evidence only goes as far back as 12000 years when it comes to civilization. So what were they ruling over then? Villages? Cavemen settlements? And they weren't even christian, nor jewish, nor monotheistic. Were they then more virtuous than Adam?!

In truth these fantastic claimed ages are gap-fillers. Meant so that men will seem closer to the purported date of creation. The fiction writers of the myths (which aren't biblical in origin at all, but Sumerian, so that alone is a red flag: it's a borrowed story) weren't imaginative enough to make up ancestors so they just artificially exaggerated ages. Also the fact that back then, history was barely even recorded. A guy who lived two centuries before would have been utterly forgotten or become the stuff of myths. Hence why in royal historical records, records BEFORE the time that those records have been written often contain such a vast number of exaggerations. Such as wars between hundreds of thousands of people (when the world barely contained such populations of humans), or cities stretching one corner of the earth to the other, people who were supposed to have been 10 feet tall and eat rocks for breakfast, people with magical powers, etc etc. Simply because the historians who wrote it were writing about things they have absolutely no knowledge about except folk tales from their brother's sister-in-law's aunt's maid's mother's uncle's son. They didn't know archeology, nor did they even master the art of writing itself. Merely writing in an ancient version of text-speak and etch-a-sketch to represent very complex languages.

Not to mention how very easy it is to confuse numbers and names especially when something historical is transcribed over and over and over again. For example, there have been several instances of adding an additional 0 where there weren't any in the original, instances of mistaking a certain word for another (as ancient numerals often are written very confusingly, either in simple easy-to-mistranslate symbols, or using the same symbols as actual words), and of course, instances were the actual measurement of time is different. The word for 'month' may have evolved into a word for 'years'. Or people may have measured age in weeks, or by full moons, or by how often the rivers flood their villages. Etc. etc.

And of course there is the mistaking persons with the same names to be the same persons. Especially since names in the past often were simply one name and the only distinction being their place of origin or their status or work or their father. An example. If two people named Kifr lived in Tanis, Egypt, one in 6000 BC the other in 6200 BC and both are mentioned in the historical records as having the same professions and status. It would be quite easy to assume that they were the same person and that Kifr lived for 200 years. When it might actually be that the second Kifr is the great-great-grandson of the original Kifr, and the profession and status is a combination of coincidence and continuing the 'family tradition'.

It doesn't help either that persons of the same names often impersonate people from earlier times in order to plagiarize their work and add to it. There are several apocryphal writings that were discovered to have been done this way.

It has happened a lot before. Hence why modern historians often append descriptors (in ancient times, they had no such descriptions, they were simply known by one name). Hence there is Dionysus the Elder and Dionysus the Younger, there is Dionysus of Phocaea and Dionysus of Cyrene, there is Dionysus the Areopagite and the plagiarist Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite. You get the idea.

Your only evidence that they lived for close to a thousand years is a book. Why aren't they cross-referenced in their thousand years of existance? Surely they would have had 200 more books written about them, or statues and monuments, cities named after them, wars fought for them, world-changing historical events about this race of near immortals. If people lived to such ages in those times, why aren't we seeing evidence of such populations of long-lived people. Heck, if *I* lived to a thousand years back then, I would have had the patience to conquer most of the world already, build cities of unimaginable splendor, etc. Especially since I would have had the centuries to actually wait for, say, a 500 foot statue of me to be slowly hand carved by my village.

Dude, if there was a world wide flood as they say there was, what happens to things and records in a flood?

meninlove said lol, by your fallacious reasoning, Canada is less wicked than the US.

The shortening of life due to evil is not because of any specific nation or people, but the entire world as a whole. And nobody is saying, the younger you die, the more evil you are. LOL I just don't get how you can assume things like this. Where did you get this bad habit from?

There is a scientific explanation why people lived longer lives before the flood then after. Shortly after the flood people lived about one-half as long, about 450 years. By the time of Abraham it was down to 175 years. Evidently one cause for this involved the protective water canopy that was placed around the earth.

Genesis 1:6-7 states:

God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

Scientists believe that this water canopy could have provided protection against long-range radiation from the sun. This canopy in turn could have resulted in preserving the protective ozone layer which scientists fear the earth is losing, with holes in the ozone layer over the South Pole. Therefore it is believed that if the harmful radiation were kept from the earth in pre-flood times by the water canopy and by a greater ozone canopy, better health, longer life span, and perhaps greater size of pre-flood creatures could be expected. The entire earth as it was originally created was such that men would live forever without sicknes, disease and death. No doubt greater radiation amount plus other factors with which God cursed the earth have resulted in gradual deterioration of mankind and decreasing length of life.

I don't suppose a possibility is that it was months being counted, not years? And that later oral and written records confused the measure of time being used, over the long centuries that these stories were passed down?

Red_Vespa saidI don't suppose a possibility is that it was months being counted, not years? And that later oral and written records confused the measure of time being used, over the long centuries that these stories were passed down?

The earth, between the time of creation and the flood, must have remained a beautiful, delightful place. A daily mist watered the earth. There was no violent storms with lightning. thunder, hailstones, tornadoes. That some people today cringe in fright in the midst of severe thunderstorms and lighting is because people, even unbeliving atheists know that God still rules and controls all things. The land of this earth then was no doubt low and rolling so people could easily move about anywhere on earth. The soil was rich, deep, and fruitful as becomes evident when we consider the coal beds that are claimed to have been formed by dense vegetation which was compressed together at the time of the flood.

Professor William Winston of the Univerisity of Cambridge England, wrote in his book A New Theory of Earth: (1696)"The antediluvian earth was much more fruitful than at present; and the multitude of the vegetable production much greater. The ground was tender, soft and full of juices. The antediluvian air had no large, gross masses of vapor or clouds hanging for long seasons in the air. It had no great drop of rain descending in multitudes together, which we call showers, but the ground was watered by gentle mists and vapours ascending in the day and decending in great measure again in the succeeding night. The world was then free from violent winds, storms and agitations with all their effects on the earth and seas."

And as the earth still remained a superior place after the curse of God was placed upon it, so also did thoe first people remain superior to all people since then.

G_Force saidDo you believe people really lived as long as the Bible says they did?

Is there a scientific explanation that explains why the longevity of people declined over time?

Ok here's my explanation: In the pre-flood environment the earth's atmosphere was far more oxygen rich. This allowed, amongst other things, large reptiles to grow that look just like dinosaurs and humans to live for considerably longer than they do now. Following the flood, the oxygen content of the air dropped dramatically.

It's all pretty clearly layed out in Genesis 1:7

Religious people will believe anything. Anything. I actually had this told to me would you believe!

G-Force said, "The oldest person in the Bible was Methuselah at 969 years, then later God lowered the average life span to 120 years, and then even lower to our current average of 70 to 80 years--and this because of the increasing wickedness of mankind.

Sorry, you silly man, but this is what you said. Life expectancy in Canada is higher than that. You never stated 'global average'.

G_Force saidScientists believe that this water canopy could have provided protection against long-range radiation from the sun. This canopy in turn could have resulted in preserving the protective ozone layer which scientists fear the earth is losing, with holes in the ozone layer over the South Pole. Therefore it is believed that if the harmful radiation were kept from the earth in pre-flood times by the water canopy and by a greater ozone canopy, better health, longer life span, and perhaps greater size of pre-flood creatures could be expected. The entire earth as it was originally created was such that men would live forever without sicknes, disease and death. No doubt greater radiation amount plus other factors with which God cursed the earth have resulted in gradual deterioration of mankind and decreasing length of life.

Which scientists exactly? ROFL. A fucking water canopy? You know what that would've resulted in? Hell. A frozen world of perpetual thunderstorms.

Here's a fun fact: Solar radiation reaching the Earth was actually far greater in the earlier times. Because the atmosphere composition wasn't the same as today. It was mostly carbon dioxide. Trapping heat very effectively indeed. Don't believe me? Take a trip to Venus sometime.

And what makes you think that having water magically present in the upper atmosphere increases the ozone layer? There is already water up there, and it's called CLOUDS. The blue thingie that ancient people once thought was another ocean is an optical illusion. Or did astronauts actually pass through the Sky Ocean once? Maybe they even hit a few unfortunate cherubim with their rockets eh?

G_Force saidAnd what gives you proof of any of the things you say about this? You are wildly speculating about all of this.

Uhuh. Did you even bother to check out the things I said? Or was it too long for your simple brain?

Dionysus the Areopagite for example, was once mistaken with Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite simply because they had the same name and one of them actually took pains to pretend to be the first Dionysus the Areopagite. So cleverly in fact that for centuries people thought they were the same person, despite the first Dionysus having lived centuries before the fake Dionysus.

Archeological evidence is pretty clear. You can read over the hundreds of thousands of books, articles, papers, etc. on the oldest remnants of civilization - that is - CITIES. You'll find out that man only started to build cities about 12,000 years ago. If one of your beloved patriarchs actually lived to close to a thousand years why don't we find evidence of it? Even just a passing mention is enough. Yet, there's nothing. Not a single fucking thing.

You even admitted even the twin towers would leave SOMETHING for future generations to discover. Adam and his fantastically longlived ancestors left NOTHING.

Heck, if they lived for a thousand years, they'd have airplanes by then. A thousand years of continuous accretion of knowledge begets wise men. So wise, we'd have technological wonders back in those days. Heck, they'd have a whole different outlook in life, a different culture. Almost inhuman. But no, all we get are mud huts.

As for birthdays, do you ever get out of your little american town like... ever?

Let me enumerate some weird ways of different cultures to count age:

Serbian/Russian: Age is counted with the exception of the current year. So a guy on his 43rd birthday would be said to be 42 years old.

Major eastern asian nations (Japan, China, Korea, etc.) count age as beginning from your first birthday and not from childbirth. And the 'birthday' actually is celebrated and counted in the NEW YEAR. Not on the date they were born.

The Maori measured years in the time when plants bore fruit.

In Eastern Outer Mongolia, age is counted for girls on the number of full moons since they were born. For boys, the number of new moons. Not on the year.

Measuring age by months was a system that was once common in primitive cultures in climates that had no seasons (no winter). The remnants of this practice is still evident in the fortune tellers and zodiac signs.

In fact, the earliest method to measure time by ancient societies was by LUNAR CALENDARS from archeological evidence. The only relatively accurate methods of measuring a year was never mesopotamian at all, but Mayan, and they counted their years by the position of the stars. Not by seasons, nor by moons.

The lunisolar calendar that we use now was only formalized and imposed by Julius Caesar after numerous changes (including the addition of new months). Which is why 'December' (which actually means 'The Tenth Month') is now actually the twelfth.

Here's the clincher:

Read about the wonderfully convoluted method of determining time by ancient Hebrews:

What's especially hilarious is you accusing me of wildly speculating and demanding proof. As if you even gave any yourself. And you even tried to pose a scientific explanation for a phenomena that was never even proved to be scientific in the first place.

Just read your bible, leave the thinking to people who can actually think.